Top Mark Kirk Articles

Bruce Rauner's voice boomed across the beer garden at Schooner's, a blue-collar Bloomington watering hole known for its king-size pork tenderloin sandwiches that could feed a family of four.
"Look, I'm not a politician, I'm a business guy," declared...

SPRINGFIELD — Republican Gov.-elect Bruce Rauner on Friday said he wanted some insiders like Democrat Bill Daley on his transition team to help identify where the “bodies are buried.”
Rauner’s decision to put Daley on his...

In the early years of his decadeslong congressional career, Philip Crane was a key figure in the fledgling conservative movement that became a standard of American politics.
In the 1970s, the Illinois congressman's home in McLean, Va., was the meeting...

Presidents from Harry Truman to Bill Clinton have turned to foreign policy in their final months in office when their domestic agendas have been stymied. For Barack Obama, that overseas pivot may offer little relief.
As he landed in Beijing on Monday...

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois kept the No. 2 job in the Senate Democratic leadership Thursday and will be the assistant minority leader next year.
Durbin, 69, is now assistant majority leader, but his Democratic Party will lose control of the Senate in...

Sen. Dick Durbin has won his last 10 races for the U.S. Senate and House, and the Democrat is way ahead in the polls this time. But he says he's running hard for re-election, and he cites a Republican as one of the reasons.
No, not opponent Jim...

When an audience member at a recent City Club of Chicago luncheon asked state Sen. Jim Oberweis if he planned to challenge U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk, a fellow Republican, in 2016, the question drew nervous laughter from the crowd.
Oberweis, who is...

President Barack Obama will return home on Sunday to appear at a campaign event for Gov. Pat Quinn, a White House official said.
Obama will spend Sunday night in the city, the official said. The next day, the president is scheduled to attend a $10,000-...

If you follow politics in this crooked city of tribes, you know that Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis — the woman tough enough to back Mayor Rahm Emanuel down — has taken ill.
We're told she's been in the hospital since Sunday,...

U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois will be among 12 members of Congress to visit a section of the U.S. border Thursday and Friday where tens of thousands of children have crossed into the country, his office announced Wednesday.
Gutierrez, a Democrat,...

Two years after Roland Burris’ controversial term in the U.S. Senate ended in 2010, a businessman who’d been arrested in a public corruption fraud scheme in Chicago told a federal grand jury that while in office Burris had tried to shake him...